NOTW - Essie - A Crewed Interest & Essie - Shine Of The Times

[natural light]

[with flash]

This weeks Nail Of The Week is Essie - A Crewed Interest, with an accent nail of Essie - Shine Of The Times. 

Essie's 'A Crewed Interest' is from the Spring 2012 Navigate Her collection, which was full of nice lights and brights as can be seen in the full collection swatches here. A Crewed Interest is a beautiful peachy creme which applied quite well considering it is such a light colour. I was able to get an even opaque coverage in 2 coats, but then decided to put 'Shine Of The Times' over all my nails, then regretted it so did a top coat of  'A Crewed Interest' again on all the nails except the thumb and accent finger. Haha. I'm ridiculous I know! So that's why in the pictures the nail polish looks so thick! Sorry about that. 

The colour really is wonderful though. This is one of my favourites in a long time. It worked well against my pale skin, and was a nice colour in the sun, or in artificial light. Not too orange, but not too washed out either. If you're pale, I would definitely recommend this one! 

The Essie - Shine Of The Times flakie nail polish is a really soft highlight on this colour. Not too noticeable, but a gentle glimmer in the right light. It reflects a silver and gold mostly, and because it's over a light colour, the colour it reflects is a lot lighter too. 

This is definitely a nail polish I will be turning to again, and would work well with almost any outfit as it's so light and neutral. Essie nail polishes are yet to disappoint me and I can't wait to get more!

This is another nail polish I bought in my last haul (as seen in my post here) from mbeautylounge and was $7.10 ($US). You can probably also find this on ebay for around the same price, or BeautyBay.com are now stocking Essie and have A Crewed Interest available online for $11.90 ($AU) AND have free postage to Australia. Myer also stock Essie, but I'm unsure of their availability on every collection so just head in to your local store and see what they have. :)

What do you think of Essie's 'A Crewed Interest' and 'Shine Of The Times'? Have you got a favourite Essie nail polish? x

Haul - mbeautylounge.com - Nail Polish!

I've finally had some good light (silly cold days) to take photos of the nail polish haul I recently received in the mail from mbeautylounge. 

If you've never been to the website http://mbeautylounge.com/ before and you're from Australia, you may be in for quite a shock at just how cheap some of your favourite brands are on there! They have OPI from as little as $5 US, Essie from $4 US, and China Glaze from around $4 too among a couple of other brands Zoya, Color Club, and Orly. 

Despite the prices being so cheap, there is a bit of a catch... the postage can be a little bit steep, which is why my friends and I always make a big order together. But in doing that we also tend to have bad luck with our orders getting mixed up and almost every order at least one nail polish gets missed or we are given the wrong thing. I'm not saying it's not going to happen EVERY time you order from them, but I think it's happened 2/3 times for us, and getting a reply via email from them about rectifying it can often prove a little difficult! So fair warning. Postage also takes a long time - we waited 6 weeks this time around! Try your luck though, it's usually worth it as they almost always have new collections on their site as soon as they are released which is awesome news for us Aussies!

The shades I purchased this time around were:

1. China Glaze - Peachy Keen (from the Up & Away collection)

2. China Glaze - Sugar High (from the Up & Away collection)

3. China Glaze - Flyin' High (from the Up & Away collection)

4. China Glaze - Four Leaf Clover (from the Up & Away collection)

5. OPI - Black Cherry Chutney (from the 2008 India Collection)

6. OPI - Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It (from the Australia Collection)

7. Essie - A Crewed Interest (from the Navigate Spring 2012 Collection) 

8. Essie - No More Film (from the Resort 2012 Collection)

I had actually ordered a different red than the OPI - Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It... I had ordered OPI - Red Lights Ahead, Where? from the Holland collection. Just another thing I was talking about with the little "issues" you can have with this site. My friend and I both also ordered China Glaze - Happy Go Lucky from the Up and Away collection and they just didn't send that to us at all, not even one bottle of the 2 we ordered. Sigh. 

I really can't complain though. I got a lot of nail polish, for really cheap! Keep an eye out for more of these in my Nails Of The Week posts coming soon. This week I've used China Glaze - Peachy Keen and I'm in love! 

What do you think of my little haul? What are your favourite places to buy nail polish? x

NOTW - Essie - No More Film + China Glaze - Meteor Shower

This weeks nails of the week is a little disappointing from my point of view, so I apologise as a first priority to my readers. As you may be able to tell by some of the scratches and chips in my nails, I didn't get to take photos as soon as I finished my manicure, it was actually a few days before I found time to take photos, and of course by then they had already started to chip! I forgot how absolutely horrible long square nails are for that. HORRIBLE. Lesson learnt on that front - shorter than my fingers, or not at all.

But moving on to the colours, which I actually loved... I have Essie - No More Film on most of my nails which is from the Essie Resort 2012 collection that came out around March this year. This is a new nail polish that I recently got from mBeautyLounge and I'll be posting a haul picture of the rest of the nail polishes I got in my order very soon. 

The formula on this nail polish, like most Essie nail polish was really rich and easy to apply, although as you can tell from my messy cuticles, it was a little harder to get neat than some others I've used before. You could probably get away with one nice coat of this colour as it is thick, but I believe I used 2 coats in the pictures above just to even it out. The true colour of this nail polish is so hard to capture with photos, as it feels as though it almost has a creamy purple tinge to the base which makes for a beautiful blue in real life that sets it apart from any other dark blue or navy nail polishes that I've used before. The formula finished in a lovely shiny polish, but I topped mine with Seche Vite top coat just to give it an extra bit of shine.

On my ring fingers I have China Glaze - Meteor Shower which is a coarse glitter nail polish. I didn't need to use any coloured base undercoat with this nail polish, it's pure glitter and dark base gives a deep shimmer of blues which are hard to capture the depth of within the photos above. It's extremely sparkly, trust me, and it's beautiful! As you can see in comparison to Essie - No More Film, China Glaze - Meteor Shower is a true navy blue so that may help you visual what I was attempting to say about the purple undertones earlier. I feel this nail polish definitely works best with a top coat, as without it it is textured and not as sparkly in the light. The formula on this is really thick, and a tad hard to apply as it is so chunky with glitter, but the top coat evens that out anyway. You only really need one coat of this because it's so thick.

I haven't worn this nail polish much since I purchased it around a year ago, not because I don't love the colour, but more because when I did wear it previously it chipped so easily and it is quite painful to remove. This time around with using a base coat and top coat it actually lasted a lot longer than the Essie colour did really, I was quite impressed. 

Essie - No More Film should be available in Myer and other major retailers that sell Essie for around $15-$20, or you can purchase it online. As I said, I purchased mine from mBeautyLounge for $7.20 US.

China Glaze - Meteor Shower is an older nail polish now, and I purchased mine from Crush Cosmetics at least 12 months ago, and from what I can see it's no longer available on there. They are great for China Glaze though and an Australian based website. If anyone knows where you can still buy this nail polish online, let me know and I will update this post. You might need to try ebay even, sometime's you get lucky there! 

What do you think of this colour combination? Have you tried Essie Nail Polish before? What's your favourite colour? x

NOTW - Mecca - Love

This weeks Nail Of The Week is a delightful red shade from Mecca called 'Love'. 

This colour was available from Mecca Cosmetics in a cute little 2 pack called 'From Paris With Love' around February 2011, so unfortunately I don't think it's available to buy anymore (unless you can find it hidden somewhere in the big world of the internet or ebay - sorry readers). But despite that, it's definitely one of my favourite reds that I own. 

It's a step under a bright red, and has a little hint of a creamy coral in direct sunlight. So pretty! And the formula with Mecca nail polish is always perfect. It's not too thick like some of the Kit nail polish can be, but I still got the colour above with only one coat believe it or not! 

I also got a little bored yesterday and layered some Essie - As Gold As It gets over the top as can be seen in the picture below. 

It's a nice little combination, but definitely not a favourite for me. It feels a little too much like a Christmas nail personally with the gold and red combination, but a nice way to soften such a bold colour if that's what you're after. :)  

Mecca nail polish is available in Mecca Cosmetica stores Australia wide for $22 for a single bottle and their colour range is not huge, but I love every single colour they produce I swear. For your nearest store you can check here, or you can order online from their website here too. 

The Essie nail polish is part of the Luxe Effects collection, and I purchased mine from mbeautylounge.com. They're a great website for cheaper nail polish, but the postage does take a long time and we've had a few orders come back wrong now, so just keep that in mind. Maybe you might be able to find them on ebay under a more reputable seller? 

What do you think of these colours? Have you tried Mecca Nail Polish before? x